There is a break room the size of a basketball court located in the top.
Matterhorn is 147 feet tall, exactly 1/100th size replica of the real mountain in Switzerland.
The attraction is based on the Disney film Third Man on the Mountain.
The Matterhorn is made of wood and steel with a plaster coating over a layer of metal mesh.
Required a "E" ticket in 1959
Required a "E" ticket in 1964-1965
From WED Disneyland Dictionary 1968
Is a 146-foot-high replica of the famous Swiss Mountain. The Matterhorn is Disneyland's tallest land-mark. Mountain climbers scale its steep slopes regularly for the entertainment of guests. Its racing bobsleds are among Disneyland's most popular attractions. The Skyway passes through the "Glacier Grotto" and "Ice Caverns" half way to the top. Tinker Bell begins her flight from its peak every night during the summer season. Bobateda provide one of the most thrilling adventures in Disneyland with two separate "runs." Four-passenger bobsleds climb to an eight-story height inside the mountain, then race downward on tracks, which wind inside and out, skim past waterfalls and through "Glacier Grotto" providing many flash-by views of Disneyland. Climax of the journey comes as sleds splash into glacier lakes at the bottom of the mountain.
Required a "E" ticket in 1970's
In 1978 an Abominable Snowman, ice caverns and glowing ice crystals were added.
Matterhorn mountain, started as a 20-foot-high pile of dirt. When construction crews were digging up the Sleeping Beauty Castle moat, they piled the dirt up to the right of the Sleeping Beauty Castle, on the border of Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. Workers leveled off the top, added a few park benches and young trees, and created a sparse picnic area, called "Lookout Mountain." Walt wouldn't leave it just dirt for long. He put one of the Skyway pylons on top and considered tying it into the Alpine theme by calling it Snow Mountain. Then, after a trip to Switzerland, he had a better idea: he wanted his own Matterhorn.
The original bobsleds were single bobsleds the newer ones were two sleds linked together.
The Matterhorn was known during design as Snow Mountain, Mount Disneyland, Disneyland Mountain, Sorcerer's Mountain, Magic Mountain, Fantasy Mountain, Echo Mountain.
When you start up the computers for the Matterhorn the screen displays a messages which says, "Harold isn't going to like this."
The mountain climbers use metal bolts to secure themselves. The bolts were out there originally for the painters, but they followed some incredible routes.
From Steve Birnbaum brings you the best of Disneyland 1982:
Opened during the summer of the premiere of Walt Disney's 1959 Third Man on the Mountain, which dramatized an ascent of this mighty Swiss peak, this has to be counted among Disneyland's best true thrill rides. Even locals who have been here many times and who know the park well don't mind standing in line for this one. Like Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the Matterhorn Bobsleds ride has a thrill to it as Richard M. Nixon, who dedicated the attraction in 1959 when he was vice-president, can attest. (In fact, it was quite a novelty at the time because of its then-unique block system dispatch, which allowed more than one car to be in action at once, and because of its cylinder-rail track and urethane wheels, which have since be- come quite commonplace among coasters.) The real allure of the ride is that along with the speed goes a show. You take a long climb into the cold, black innards of the mountain and make a long, speeding, twisting, and turning descent through a cloud of fog and past giant icicles and ice crystals with the wind howling about you all the while-toward a brief encounter with the awesome Abominable Snowman (a sort of albino version of King Kong) and a splashdown in an alpine lake. The speed of the downhill flight from the creature seems even greater than it really is, since much of it takes place inside tunnels. Many first-time visitors shut their eyes very tight. Since the designers studied photographs of the real peak when developing the designs, the mountain itself is a pretty good reproduction of the real one, which Walt saw for the first time in 1958 when traveling through Europe and which gave him the idea for the attraction. It even faces in the proper direction. The mountain's hooked peak is a bit more bent than that of the original in Switzerland, and this Matterhorn is smaller, a hundredth the size of the real McCoy. Like the Sleeping Beauty Castle, it uses forced perspective to make the summit look even loftier than the approximately 147 feet it actually is. Even the trees and the shrubs get in on the act. The ones at the timberline-that is, 65 to 75 feet from the base of the mountain-are far smaller than those at the bottom. In fact, these Atlas and deodar cedar, European white birch, and Chinese tallow trees are one of the most interesting aspects of the attraction. Growing in cement pockets whose small size retards root growth and, accordingly, plant growth above ground, they're watered by a gardener who must walk the attraction's bobsled track to reach them. As for the mountain itself, it was built with some 2,175 pieces of steel (of varying lengths and widths) as its framework. The contours were mold- ed and shaped using a further skeleton of 3/8-inch steel wire topped with a layer of metal mesh and layers of plaster-two of them sprayed on and the third and final one applied with a trowel for maximum verisimilitude.
July 2011. Planning begins for movie based on the Matterhorn.
Click Here To Gain Access
